June 12, 2013

E3 2013: PlayStation 4

by Tavian Glenn

We’re back.

After seven years of madness and slight disappointments and multiple trips at the finish line, Sony came to E3 and gave back to the people. Today might as well have been Christmas to the gaming community. Sony’s press conferences announced a myriad of just….wonderful things. While not addressing to the game aspect as much, they focused on something way better tonight, which was making the PlayStation 4 completely user friendly. The highlights of tonight’s press conference by Sony shook the gaming world to its core, and plan to give us exactly what we wanted in a console.

The online service is looking pretty neat. A new subscription price of $5 a month would mean that it is more expensive than Xbox live service. This would be a problem if PlayStation Plus was not mandatory. Sony has made it official that the new online feature for PlayStation will be that PlayStation Plus will be mandatory. If anyone isn’t familiar with this great online service they have amazing deals and discounted game packages. On some months they even offer a couple of games (Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider) for free. For the next generation you HAVE to have this when you log on PS online. In short, you have to have free stuff. (That’s a shame, right?)

I refuse to fall into the same trap that the last PlayStation console brought with the promise of games. It seems that Sony has been listening to the cries and complaints from this last generation. The games look sleek and powerful and I could go on about the new final fantasy and the great previews on such games as Infamous: Second Sun and Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag. Watch Dogs looks like an amazing piece of work from Ubisoft. The product of what happens when you take open world exploration of assassin’s creed and mix it with the TV. show Person of Interest. It’s a game where you can make your own controlled chaos and it looks like a lot of fun. This game alone has given me reason to buy a PS4 this holiday season (I’ll take one). The one game that has singlehandedly shut down my Facebook, and Tumblr, and Twitter is the announcement of Kingdom Hearts 3. Kingdom Hearts is a franchise that has won the hearts of millions with its storylines, fun gameplay and insane integration with the world of Disney. (Who doesn’t want play in the Lion King Universe?) The announcement, which literally in one minute and twenty-four seconds possibly sealed the deal for the thousands of fans, was reason enough to buy this console. (I’ll take 20)

The most impressive thing about Sony’s press conference is the constant competition with Microsoft. The whole concept of trading games with someone, playing used games or playing offline seems…normal. In Sony’s instructional video of how to trade games, it provides an alternative to Xbox one’s game policies.

The most impressive thing about the PlayStation 4 is the price tag of a whopping $399…you understand how cheap that is!? That’s $50 more than the Wii U right now.

Sony has been listening in on the gaming community as a whole. All the complaints and mess-ups have culminated to this, press conference where we can almost forget about the mistakes the PS3 made. It looks like when the system drops this holiday season, they will indeed stand and deliver.